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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Open Culture - 30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God & Reason

This is very cool - and of course it comes from Open Culture, the curators of cool on the web. Some of the writers featured include Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Iain Banks, Roddy Doyle, and no collection would be complete without Christopher Hitchens.

Enjoy - this is frequently fascinating.

As an added bonus, in the summary below, there are links to a two part video of 100 academics, mostly scientists, talking about their perspectives on God and reason.

This past summer, Jonathan Pararajasingham, a neurosurgeon in London, created a montage of 100 renowned academics, mostly all scientists, talking about their thoughts on the existence of God. (Find it in two parts here and here.) Now’s he back with a new video, 30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God. It runs 25 minutes, and it offers as much a critique of orthodox religious belief as it does a literary tribute to humanism and rationalism. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Salman Rushdie (who kindly tweeted us this weekend), Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth — they all make an appearance. The full list of writers appears below the jump.

And, before we close, let me say this. Whenever we post videos like these, we get the question. Why the occasional focus on atheism/rationalism/humanism? And the simple answer comes down to this: If you cover writers, academics and scientists, the thinking skews in that direction. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are in shorter supply. But if someone pulls them together and makes a montage, we’ll likely feature it too. H/T RichardDawkins.net

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